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\kz^z BEN JONSON 



AND 



SHAKESPEARE 

By 
SIR GEORGE GREENWOOD 



M I T C H ELL 






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Class 



Book 



PRESENTED BY 



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JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 



BEN JONSON 



AND 



SHAKESPEARE 



By SIR GEORGE GREENWOOD 

Author of 

** Shakespeare's Law," 

" The Shakespeare Problem Restated," 

" Is there a Shakespeare Problem ? " 

" The Vindicators of Shakespeare," 

" Shakspere's Handwriting," 

etc. 



EDWIN VALENTINE MITCHELL 

27, LEWIS STREET, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT 






FIRST 
E D ITIO N 
COPYRIGHT 
IN GREAT 
BRITAIN 

I 9 2 I 



'A^«3: 



Printed by Ben Johnson & Co., Ltd., York and London. 



CONTENTS, 



rage. 
Foreword ........ vii-ix 

Jonson's testimony not "irrefragable" . . . 11 

Jonson's closely associated with the publication of the 

Shakespeare Folio of 1623 . . . . . 12 

Jonson wrote the Folio Prefaces . . . . .13-17 

Dr. Felix Schelling on the undoubted Jonsonian author- 
ship . . , . . . . . 15 

Jonson's responsibility for a suggestio falsi . . . 18 

Plays not by " Shakespeare " published under his name. 18-19 

Henry VIII. not by " Shakespeare " . . . . 19 

Heminge and Condell and the " unblotted manuscripts " 20 

Mr. Dugdale Sykes on the " standard of honesty " among 

publishers in Shakespearean times ... 20 

The " True Originalls " of Shakespeare's plays . 17w, 21-23 

" Shakespeare " a pen name . . . . .23 

Why " Shake-speare " ? 23« 

The work of many pens, and of one transcendent genius 

in the Folio ....... 25 

Dangers for playwrights in the time of the Tudors . 25 

Jonson's eulogy prefixed to the Folio .... 26 

Was Jonson " a liar ? " 27 

Jonson's Discoveries ....... 28-31 

The " unblotted manuscripts " were fair copies . . 30 

Jonson and " Poet Ape " . . . . . . 31 

Jonson's Poetaster ....... 32 

Players were " i' the statute " . . . . . 32-33 



VI 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 
Everyman out of his Humour and Shakspere's Arms . . 33-34 

Were Love's Labour's Lost and Venus and Adonis written 

by the " Stratford rustic ? " (Garnett & Gosse) . 35 

Professor Abel Lefranc on the " Stratfordian " beHef . 35 

" Shakespeare " a mask-name ..... 35 

" Small Latin and less Greek " . . . . . 35n 

Jonson's lines under the Droeshout engraving . . 36-37 

The Petition of the Burbages to the Earl of Pembroke in 

1635. Shakespeare a " deserving man " ! . . 38-41 

Two Notes in Manningham's Journal . . . . 41n 

NOTE A— Jonson and Bacon 42-44 

Opinion of Henry James .... 44 

NOTE B — Was Shakspere an actor-manager ? 
Had he a residence in London ? 
Did he ever act in a *' Shakespearean " play ? 
What parts did he play ? . . . . 45-55 

NOTE C — Jonson's Discoveries ..... 56 



FOREWORD 

Sir Sidney Lee some twenty years ago committed 
himself to the following statement concerning William 
Shakspere of Stratford-upon-Avon : — " Patient investi- 
gation which has been in progress for more than two 
hundred years has brought together a mass of bio- 
graphical detail which far exceeds that accessible in the 
case of any poet contemporary with Shakespeare." 
{Times, Jan. 8, 1902). 

Now if this statement is intended to mean (and I can 
assign no other reasonable significance to the words) 
that we know more about the life of Shakspere of Strat- 
ford than we know about that of any poet contemporary 
with him, there is an audacity about it which is really 
quite sublime ; indeed the proverbial " one step " 
between the sublime and the ridiculous seems here to 
have entirely disappeared. 

It is quite true that around the name of " Shake- 
speare " there has grown up a mountainous mass of 
literature — of criticism, of illustration, of theory, of 
conjecture, of dogmatism, of assertion, of allusions, 
real or supposed, etc., etc. — which is perfectly appalling 
in its extent and variety ; but notwithstanding that the 
whole world has been ransacked for evidence, and 
notwithstanding that lives have been devoted to the 
subject and an incredible amount of labour bestowed 
upon it, we find it as true to-day as it was when the late 
J. R. Green published his History of the Eniylish People, 
that *' of hardly any great poet do we know so little." 

In marked contrast with Sir Sidney's flamboyant 
assertion are the more sober, and quite veracious, words 
with which Mr. Gregory Smith commences his recently 
published study of Ben Jonson in the " Englishmen of 
Letters " series (1919) : — ** We know more of Jonson 
than of any of the greater writers of his age. There 
are no mysteries, or at least great mysteries, in his 
literary career, and the biographer is not driven, with 



viii FOREWORD 

the Shakespearians, to conjectural reconstruction from 
the shards of record and anecdote. Even his personahty 
stands forth fresh and convincing beside the blurred 
portrait of Marlowe, or Shakespeare, or Fletcher. For 
this fuller knowledge we are indebted to Jonson himself." 

Here I cannot do better than quote the words of a 
correspondent who has given much thought and study 
to this question. '' It is the very fulness and precision 
of the information we possess respecting Jonson's 
literary and dramatic relationships, particularly during 
the eventful years of the ' Shakespeare ' period, which 
prove that Jonson had little or nothing to do with 
Shakspere. His aggressive self-assertion not only 
kept him in the lime-light, but dragged into public 
view every one that had anything to do with him, either 
as friend or foe. We have his correspondence, his 
conversation, his personal dealings with — even compli- 
mentary poems addressed to — everybody but Shakspere." 
There is, indeed, nothing whatever to show that there 
was any real intimacy, nay, any friendship, or any 
** love lost," between Jonson and William Shakspere 
of Stratford. The alleged " merry meeting " between 
these two and Drayton, at which Shakspere is reported 
to have drunk so hard that he died from the effects of 
it, is so obviously a fable that it demands no considera- 
tion, and as to Jonson's remarks in his Discoveries, made 
many years after Shakspere's death, and not published 
till some six years after Jonson's own death, it appears 
to me that these later utterances must be taken with 
many " grains of salt," for they bear no relation to, 
and have no correspondence with, the known facts 
of Jonson's life. As I have endeavoured to show in 
the following pages Jonson was closely associated with 
the preparation and publication of the Folio of 1623 
(as a " send-ofF " for which he wrote his famous 
panegyric), and was fully cognisant of the true authorship 
of the plays therein given to the world ; and it was, 
as I am convinced, this association and this knowledge 
which coloured the cryptic utterances of his old age. 

As to the idea that Jonson was too uncompromisingly 



FOREWORD ix 

honest to lend himself to any literary deception even 
in those days when literary deceptions were so extremely 
common as to be generally regarded as but venial 
offences, if not altogether justifiable, it may, perhaps, 
be of use to quote the judgment of a deceased writer 
and critic of no small distinction. '* James," says 
Hepworth Dixon, '* had made him [Jonson] laureate, 
and he had to earn his hundred marks. If flattery 
were wanted he was rich in phrases ; if abuse were 
wanted he was no less rank in venom. Both were 
needed by the King : flattery the most fulsome, abuse 
the most scurrilous that poet had ever penned. He was 
extremely fond of drink ; he was inordinately foul of 
tongue ; in s5^cophancy he knew no depth ; no sense 

of religion guided his erratic steps Born a 

Calvinist he became a Catholic. After the Powder 
Plot he joined the court religion and helped in hunting 
down his colleagues." {Royal Windsor^ vol. iv., p. 92). 

This, it may be said, is an unduly harsh judgment. 
Possibly it may be so, but it is at any rate much nearer 
to the truth than the assertions of some critics and 
controversialists, who, in the supposed interest of the 
traditional " Stratfordian " faith, apparently think it 
necessary to put " honest Ben," as they love to style 
him, in the same category with George Washington — 
^' the man who never told a lie ! " 

But what a thousand pities it is that — so far as we 
know, and as we are fully justified in concluding — 
William Shakespere never addressed a letter or a poem 
to Jonson ; never received a letter or a poem from 
Jonson ; never received one of those gift-books which 
Jonson was so fond of presenting to his friends with 
his well-known and excellently-written autograph on 
the front page ! What a thousand pities that Ben's 
"" love," almost amounting to " idolatry " — and what 
is ** idolatry " but the worship of a graven image ? — 
never appears to have found utterance or expression 
till many years after William Shakspere's death ! 

G. G. 




JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

HE sheet anchor of the traditional belief 
with regard to the authorship of the plays 
and poems of Shakespeare is undoubtedly 
Ben Jonson. It is to the Jonsonian utterances 
that the apostles of the Stratfordian faith always 
make their appeal. That faith we are told is based 
on the *' irrefragable rock " of Ben Jonson's 
testimony/ 

Well, it was not so very long ago that we used 
to be told that the truth of a universal deluge and 
the preservation of mankind and animals of every 
kind and species, in Noah's Ark, was established 
on the " impregnable rock " of Holy Scripture, 
and yet to-day we find even high Church digni- 
taries — with whom Mr. J. M. Robertson would 
certainly be in entire agreement here — disavowing 
any belief in this interesting mythological tradition. 
Is it not, then, possible that the Jonsonian testi- 
mony may prove no more " irrefragable " or 
** impregnable " than that of those old chronicles, 
which age-long tradition has ascribed to the 
authorship of '* Moses " ? 

As a distinguished writer, well-known both in 
the political and the literary world, has written to 
me, the difficulties in the way of the orthodox 
" Shakespearian " belief seem to be insuperable. 
Are the Jonsonian utterances of such weight as 
to outweigh them all ? I reply, put Jonson in 
one scale and all the difficulties and improbabilities 

1 " The testimony of Jonson is monumental and irrefragable." — 
The Rt. Hon. J. M. Robertson in The Observer, of March 2nd, 
1919. 



12 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

— if not impossibilities — of the '' Stratfordian " 
hypothesis in the other, and old Ben will kick 
the beam. 

Now let us briefly consider this Jonsonian 
testimony. There are two utterances to which 
the orthodox appeal as conclusive evidence, viz. : 
the lines bearing Jonson's signature prefixed to 
the Folio of 1623, and the much-quoted passage 
De Shakespeare nostrati in his Timber or Discoveries. 
Let us first consider the evidence of the Folio. 

Seven years after the death of William Shakspere 
of Stratford-upon-Avon, it entered into the mind 
of somebody to publish a collected edition of 
" Mr. William Shakespeare's " plays. Who that 
somebody was we do not know, but we do know 
that Ben Jonson was very closely associated with 
the undertaking. It cannot reasonably be doubted 
that Jonson was the *' literary man " who, as the 
Cambridge Editors long ago suggested, was called 
in to write the Preface *' To the Great Variety of 
Readers " signed by the players Heminge and 
Condell.^ That he did, indeed, write this Preface 
was, in my opinion, proved by that very able 
critic, George Steevens, in a masterly critical 
analysis. " After the publication of my first 
edition of Shakespeare's works," writes Steevens, 
" a notion struck me that the preface prefixed by 
the players in 1623 to their edition of his plays 
had much of the manner of Ben Jonson, and an 
attentive comparison of that preface with various 
passages in Jonson's writings having abundantly 
supported and confirmed my conjecture, / do not 
hesitate'^ now to assert that the greatest part of it 

1 See Preface to the Cambridge Shakespeare (1863), p. 24. 

2 Original italics. Steevens's first edition of Shakespeare was 
published in 1773. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 13 

was written by him. Heminge and Condell 
being themselves wholly unused to composition, 
and having been furnished by Jonson, whose 
reputation v/as then at its height, with a copy of 
verses in praise of Shakespeare, and with others 
on the engraved portrait prefixed to his plays, 
would naturally apply to him for assistance in that 
part of the work in which they were, for the first 
time, to address the pubUck in their own names. . . . 
I think I can show the whole of the first member 
of this address, comprising eighteen Hues out of 
forty, to be entirely his ; ... a minute comparison 
of the first half of this preface with various passages 
in Jonson's works will, I conceive, estabUsh my 
hypothesis beyond a doubt. "^ 

It will be noticed that Steevens here speaks 
without doubt as to part of this Preface only as 
having been written by Jonson, but we need have 
no hesitation in saying that if Jonson is proved to 
have written part he undoubtedly wrote the whole 
of the Preface. It seems to me absurd to suppose 
that, having been called in to write in the names 
of the players, he would have contented himself 
with composing a fragment of a preface, and have 
left the rest to others. Least of all would he have 
left what he had written to be completed by those 
'* deserving men," Heminge and Condell, who 
were, as Steevens justly remarks, '' wholly unused 
to composition." That was not the way in which 
old Ben, of all men, was in the habit of doing things. 
I entertain no doubt, therefore, that the Preface 

1 See BoswelVs Malone (The " Third Variorum, ' 1821), Vol. 2, 
p. 663, where Steevens's masterly proof will be found. See also 
niy Shakespeare Problem Restated at p. 264 et seq. ; where, how- 
ever, by an unfortunate slip, the demonstration is ascribed to 
Malone instead of to Steevens. See further Is there a Shakespeare 
Problem? p. 382 et seq. 



14 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

" To the Great Variety of Readers " was wholly 
written by Ben Jonson. 

But, further, there can be, in my judgment, no 
reasonable doubt that Jonson wrote the " Epistle 
Dedicatory " also. He was, doubtless (I use that 
often misused adverb with confidence here), 
employed as the '* literary man " to write the pre- 
faces to the Folio, as, also, the poetical eulogium 
of the author prefixed to it. The '* Epistle 
Dedicatory " contains many classical allusions, 
quite in the Jonsonian style. Some of it is taken 
direct from the dedication of Pliny's Natural 
History^ and there is an obvious allusion to a well- 
known ode of Horace.^ Mr. James Boaden, 
amongst others, had no doubts about the matter. 
" Ben," he says, " it is now ascertained, wrote 
for the Player-Editors the Dedication and Preface 
to his [Shakespeare's] works. "^ 

The Cambridge Editors — and the names of 
Messrs. W. G. Clark, John Glover, and Aldis 
Wright must always command respect — are at 
least so far in agreement that they tell us " the 
Preface (to the Great Variety of Readers) may have 
been written by some literary man in the employment 
of the publishers^ and merely signed by the two 

1 Odes, Bk. III., 23. The reader will note the expression, 
" absolute in their numbers," in the Preface " To the Great 
Variety of Readers " — a classical expression to be found in Pliny 
and Val. Maximus — and other similar expressions taken from 
the classics quite in the Jonsonian manner. 

2 On the Portraits of Shakespeare, 1824, p. 13. Mr. Furness, 
also, commenting upon a remark of Pope's, writes that he " could 
hardly have been so unfamiliar with the Folios as not to have 
known that Jonson was the author of both the Address to the 
Reader and some commendatory lines in the First Folio." 
{Julius Ccesar, by Furness, Act III., Sc. 1, p. 137 note). Mr. 
Andrew Lang writes, " Like Mr. Greenwood, I think that Ben 
was the penman." {Shakesteare , Bacon and The Great Unknozvn, 
p. 207 note). 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 15 

players.^' Nor would this be at all an unusual 
thing to do. For example, when the folio edition 
of Beaumont and Fletcher's Plays was brought 
out in 1647, by the publisher Moseley, there was 
a dedicatory epistle, similar to that of the Shake- 
speare Folio, prefixed to it, and addressed to the 
survivor of the " Incomparable Paire," viz. : 
Philip, Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, who 
was then Lord Chamberlain. This was signed 
by ten of the players of the King's Company, but 
nobody, I imagine, supposes that they wrote it, 
or any one of them. " The actors who aided the 
scheme," says Sir Sidney Lee, in his Introduction 
to the Facsimile Edition of the Shakespeare Folio, 
** played a very subordinate part in its execution. 
They did nothing beyond seconding Moseley's 
efforts in securing the ' copy ' and signing their 
names — to the number of ten — to the dedicatory 
epistle." From this I conclude that, in Sir Sidney 
Lee's opinion, the actors in this case, at any rate, 
did not write the epistle to which they so signed 
their names. 

Now in the case of the Shakespeare Folio we 
know that Jonson wrote the lines facing the 
Droeshout engraving, subscribed with his initials, 
and the eulogistic verses signed with his name in 
full. Is it not reasonable, then, to conclude that 
he was the " literary man in the employment of 
the publishers," as suggested by the Cambridge 
Editors, and that he wrote the prefaces, which 
are entirely in his style ? May we not go further 
and say that it is certain that he was the author of 
these prefaces } Let us see what the Professor 
of English Literature in the University of Penn- 
sylvania has to say on the subject. Dr. Felix 
Schelling, who holds this position, is recognised 



16 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

as a high Shakespearean authority. He is, more- 
over, a man to whom any doubt as to the " Strat- 
fordian " authorship of the plays is anathema. 
And this is what he tells us with regard to the 
preparation for publication of the Folio of 1623 : — 
*' Neither Heminge nor Condell was a writer, and 
such a book ought to be properly introduced. In 
such a juncture there could be no choice. The 
best book of the hour demanded sponsorship by 
the greatest contemporary man of letters. Ben 
Jonson was the King's poet, the Laureate, the 
literary dictator of the age ; and Jonson rose 
nobly to the task, penning not only the epigram 
* To the Reader,' and his noble personal eulogium, 
but both the prose addresses of dedication. Of 
this matter there can he no question whatever^ and if 
anyone is troubled by the signatures of Heminge 
and Condell appended to two addresses which 
neither of them actually wrote, let him examine 
into his own conduct in the matter of circulars, 
resolutions, and other papers which he has had 
written by skilled competence for the appendage 
of his signature."^ 

1 See report of an address delivered at Houston Hall, Penn- 
sylvania, by Dr. Felix Schelling, in The Pennsylvania Gazette^ 
Jan. 16, 1920. My italics. The Jonsonian authorship has been 
again forcibly advocated by Professor W. Dinsmore Briggs. 
See The Times Literary Supplement, Nov. 12, 1914, April 22, 
and Nov. 18, 1915. See further, Appleton Morgan's Intro- 
duction to Hainlet and the Ur-Hamlet (Bankside Shakespeare, 
1908, p. xxvii). Sir Sidney Lee appears to suppose that Heminge 
and Condell were imitating Jonson in these prefaces. Certain 
phrases therein he says ** crudely echo passages " in Jonson's 
works {Life [1915], p. 558). This appears to me a ridiculous 
suggestion. The prefaces are Jonsonian to the core, and if the 
two " deserving men," or either of them, had been able to write 
in this style it is pretty certain that we should have heard of other 
writings from their pen. But, as the Cambridge Editors remark, 
they had no " practice in com.position," these editors being thus 
in agreement with George Steevens who, as already mentioned, 
says of the two players that they were " wholly unused to com- 
position " [Dr. Schelling has now re-published the above 
mentioned address under title " The Seedpod of Shakespeare 
Criticism."] 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 17 

But, as every student of Shakespeare knows, 
the players, in the Preface " to the Great Variety 
of Readers," which bore their signatures, say, or 
rather, are made to say, that the readers of the 
plays who were '' before .... abus'd with diverse 
stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and 
deformed by the frauds and stealthes of injurious 
imposters," are now presented with correct ver- 
sions, '' cur'd, and perfect of their limbes ; and 
all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he 
[Shakespeare] conceived them." Whereupon the 
Cambridge Editors justly remark, " The natural 
inference to be drawn from this statement is that 
all the separate editions of Shakespeare's plays 
were ' stolen,' ' surreptitious,' and * imperfect,' 
and that all those published in the Folio were 
printed from the author's own manuscripts. But 
it can be proved to demonstration that several of 
the plays in the Folio were printed from earlier 
quarto editions, and that in other cases the quarto 
is more correctly printed, or from a better manu- 
script, than the Folio text, and therefore of higher 
authority. . . . As the * setters forth ' are thus con- 
victed of a ' siiggestio falsi ' in one point it is not 
improbable that they may have been guilty of the 
like in another.^ ^^ 

^ I have dealt at some length with this matter in Is there a 
Shakespeare Problem ? ch. XI. As Mr. j. Dover Wilson writes, 
*' The title-page (of the Folio) is inscribed * Published according 
to the True Originall Copies,' while the sub-title on a later page 
is still more explicit : — ' The Workes of William Shakespeare, 
containing all his Comedies, Histories^ and Tragedies : Truely 
set forth, according to their first ORIGINALL.' The phrase ' first 
original ' can mean only one thing — author's manuscript. Mr. 
Dugdale Sykes is, therefore, perfectly correct in his statement 
that those responsible for the Folio claimed to be printing all the 
plays in the volume from Shakespeare's autograph." {Times 
Literary Supplement^ Jan. 22, 1920,) And this claim we know 
to be false. 



18 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

Jonson then, as writer of the prefaces, and 
closely associated with the preparation and pub- 
lication of the Folio, was guilty of the suggestio 
falsi concerning the '* stolne and surreptitious 
copies," with which the Cambridge Editors justly 
charge the '* setters forth," or the " literary man " 
who, as they suggest, wrote the prefaces for them. 
And even if it may be contended, as Mr. A. W. 
Pollard contends, that, speaking strictly by the 
card, the statement was true, inasmuch as " not 
all but only some of the quartos ought to be treated 
as " stolne and surreptitious," that cannot acquit 
the author of the preface, seeing that, as this 
learned writer admits, " with the sale of the First 
Folio in view it was doubtless intended to be 
interpreted " as it has, in fact, been interpreted 
ever since, viz. : that the plays were all now for 
the first time published from perfect author's 
manuscripts, which certainly is very far from the 
truth.' 

Jonson must have known also that a large 
quantity of work was included in the Folio which 
was not ** Shakespearean " at all, i.e., which was 
not the work of the real ** Shakespeare," whoever 
he was, the one supremely great man who has 
given us such plays as Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, 
to take but three examples. Many plays had been 
published in the convenient name of " Shakes- 
peare," or as by " W.S.," such as the Tragedy of 
Locrine (1595), Sir John Oldcastle (1600), Thomas 
Lord Cromwell (1602), The London Prodigal (1605), 
The Puritan (1607), A Yorkshire Tragedy (1608)^ 

1 See Shakespeare Folios and Quartos, by A. W. Pollard (1909), 
pp. 1. 2. 

2 Both A Yorkshire Tragedy and The Two Noble Kinsmen were 
licensed as by Shakespeare. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 19 

and Pericles (1609). All these were rejected by 
the editor, or editors, of the First Folio, although 
they were included by the editors of the Third 
Folio (1664) and retained by the editors of the 
Fourth FoHo (1685). 

On the other hand, there were included in the 
First Folio such plays as Henry VI., Part /., 
which all are agreed is not Shakespearean, although 
it is possible that it contains some few items of 
Shakespeare's work ; Henry VI., Parts II. and 
///., a very large part of which is certainly 
not Shakespearean ; Titus Andronicus, which, 
according to the overwhelming balance of authority, 
is not Shakespearean ; The Taming of the Shrew, 
as to which it is unanimously agreed that Act I. 
is not Shakespeare's, and which is considered by 
many, and I think with reason, not to be Shake- 
spearean at all ; Timon of Athens generally beheved 
to be very largely non-Shakespearean ; and other 
plays, such as Troilus and Cressida, in which the 
work of one or two other pens is, probably, to be 
found. Nevertheless, all these plays were pub- 
lished as by " Shakespeare." 

Again, take the case of Henry VIII. James 
Spedding long ago proved that the greater part 
of this play, including Wolsey's famous soliloquy, 
and Buckingham's beautiful and pathetic speech 
on his way to execution, is the work of Fletcher ; 
and now Mr. H. Dugdale Sykes, in an excellent 
little book published at the Shakespeare Head 
Press at Stratford-on-Avon, with the blessing of 
that strictly orthodox Shakespearean, the late 
Mr. A. H. Bullen, entitled Sidelights on Shake- 
speare, has contended — and I think there can be 
no doubt he is right — that all of this magnificent 
drama that was not written by Fletcher is the work 



20 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

of Massinger. In fact, as Mr. Sykes writes, " the 
editor of the foHo foisted upon the pubUc as a 
Shakespearean drama an early work of Massinger 
and Fletcher's." 

What, then, becomes of the supposed guarantee 
of " those deserving men " Heminge and Condell ? 
What becomes of the dismal farce of the " unblotted 
manuscripts } " 

Let us listen to what Mr. Dugdale Sykes, 
himself, I believe, a quite orthodox *' Stratfordian," 
has to say on these points. In reply to the question 
how it was that Heminge and Condell came to 
include Henry VIII. in the First Folio Shakespeare, 
and how it was that Waterson came to put Shake- 
speare's name with Fletcher's on the title-page of 
The Two Noble Kinsmen, he WTites, " I suggest as 
a possible answer to this question that neither 
Heminge and Condell nor Waterson possessed a 
higher standard of honesty than seems to have 
been prevalent among the publishers of their 
day : that in this respect there may have been 
little to choose between them and Humphrey 
Moseley, who in 1647 printed as Beaumont and 
Fletcher's (from * the author's original copies ') 
thirty-five plays of which a large number were 
written by Massinger and Fletcher, while three 
{The Laws of Candy, The Fair Maid of the Inn, 
and Lovers Cure) contain no recognizable trace 
either of Beaumont or Fletcher. When we find 
that two publishers issued spurious plays as 
Shakespeare's during his lifetime, and that a third 
put Shakespeare's name on the title-page of the 
early play of King John in 1623, there appears to 
me to be no reason why we should accept Heminge 
and Condell's attribution of Henry VIII. to 
Shakespeare as decisive. And I submit that we 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 21 

have 2L solid reason for doubting their honesty, 
inasmuch as their assertion that all the plays in 
the Folio were printed from the author's manu- 
scripts is known to be untrue."^ 

So much then for the *' deserving men/' and 
the '' True Originalls " and the '* unblotted. 
manuscripts." And what becomes of Jonson's 
testimony ? Jonson was " in the swim." He 
was concerned *' up to the hilt " in the publication 
of the Folio, and all these facts must have been 
within his knowledge. 

The orthodox were wont to appeal to Messrs. 
Heminge and Condell as though it were blas- 
phemous to doubt the truth of any word they have 
said. Now this bubble has been pricked, and 
soon, perhaps, it may dawn upon the critics that 
" Jonson's testimony " with regard to the Shake- 
spearean Folio and its supposed author is not of 
much greater value. He knew that not all the 
plays included in the Folio were written by 

1 The Two Noble Kinsmen was attributed on the title-page of 
the first Edition (163-i) to " the memorable worthies of their 
time, Mr. John Fletcher and Mr. William Shakespeare." It is 
now, as I apprehend, established by Mr. Dugd^le Sykes, following 

Mr. Robert Boyle's extremely able advocacy of Massinger's 
claims to the authorship of the scenes attributed to Shakespeare " 
(Transactions of the New Shakespeare Society for 1882), that 
the play is the joint work of Massinger and Fletcher. See Mr. 
A. H. Bullen's Prefatory note to Sidelights 077 Shakespeare, p. viii. 
With regard to Waterson's ascription of the play to Shakespeare 
and Fletcher in 1634, Mr. Sykes writes, " The omission of the 
play from the later Shakespeare Folios and its inclusion in the 
second Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, after it had been issued 
with Shakespeare's name on the title-page, deprives this of any 
value." (See Times Literary Supplement, Jan. 1, 1920). Mr. 
Sykes, by the way, warns us that " the inclusion of the play in 
the second Beaumont and Fletcher folios is of no more value as 
evidence for Beaumont than for Massinger, as it has been estab- 
lished beyond doubt that Massinger and not Beaumont was 
Fletcher's partner in a large number of the so-called Beaumont 
and Fletcher plays." Work cited, p. 1 note. 



22 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

** Shakespeare " ; he knew well enough that they 
were not printed from the '* true originals " ; he 
knew that the statement about the '* unblotted 
manuscripts " was mere fudge. ^ It is not necessary 
to condemn him and the players as guilty of 
dishonesty in the same measure as we should do 
if we tried them by the standard of the present 
day, for we should remember that such aberration 
from the path of strict veracity was, as Mr. Dugdale 
Sykes truly says, looked upon as a more or less 
venial offence in those times when literary 
mystifications of this sort were of common 
occurrence, and when plays, and other works, 
were frequently published in the names of writers 
who were not really the authors thereof. 

And now, in 1623, all '* Shakespeare's " plays 
were to be published in collected form, " Truely 
set forth, according to their first ORIGINALL," 

1 Very much the same thing was said about Fletcher by Moseley 
in his introduction to the Beaumont and Fletcher Folio, viz. : 
that what he wrote was " free from interlining " and that he 
" never writ any one thing twice." The saying appears to have 
become a cliche. Moreover, what of Jonson's statement in his 
eulogium prefixed to the Folio to the effect that Shakespeare was 
wont to " strike the second heat upon the Muses anvil," in order 
to fashion his ** well-turned and true-filed lines " ? This means, 
of course, that, instead of writing ciirrente calamo and leaving 
" scarse a blot " on his papers (an absurd idea on the face of it), 
he carefully revised his plays. It follows, therefore, that when 
these plays were handed to the players (if ever they were so 
handed) either the manuscripts must have shown many a blotted 
line, or the players received " fair copies." If we adopt the first 
alternative the statement of the writer of the Folio preface was 
untrue ; if we adopt the second the hypothesis of the fair copies 
is vindicated. Some critics, however, who cling tenaciously 
to the idea of the " unblotted manuscripts " would have us reject 
Jonson's testimony as to Shakespeare's patient revising. Jonson„ 
in fact, is to be taken as an unimpeachable witness of truth when 
it suits these critics so to take him, but to be summaril^^ dismissed 
as untrustworthy when his testimony does not square with their 
theories. In any case, then, Jonson's evidence is discredited. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 23 

as the second title-page of the FoHo informs the 
reader. But alas, they were far from being all 
Shakespearean work, and many of them far from 
being *' set forth according to their first original." 
Jonson, however, was employed to give the volume 
a good send-off, not only by writing the prefaces, 
and making himself responsible for the statements 
therein contained, together with those on the two 
title-pages, but also by the exercise of his poetical 
genius. He accordingly wrote the very remarkable 
lines which face the paralysing Droeshout engraving 
and also the long eulogy signed by his name 
prefixed to the Folio. 

Now, what was the state of the case, as I conceive 
it to have been } I conceive that the name of 
" Shakespeare," first given to the public on the 
dedicatory page of Venus and Adonis, in 1593, had 
been adopted as a convenient mask-name.^ That 
many subsequently wrote under that name besides 
the real ** Shakespeare," whoever he was, is a 
simple matter of fact, and also that they did so 
unrebuked and unrestrained, without let or 
hindrance. I conceive that several men of high 
position, but, more especially one man of high 
position and of supreme genius, wrote plays 
under that name. I conceive that Shakspere, 

1 In its hyphenated form the name ' Shake-speare," which so 
often appears, was an excellent pseudonym. But why on earth 
should player Shakspere wish to appear as " Shake-speare ? " 
A man of the name of Northcliffe (e.g.) does not usually desire 
to publish under the name of " North-Cliffe." Nor if his name 
happens to be Sheepshanks does he give his writings to the 
public in the name of ' Sheep-Shanks." Nor does Mr. 
Ramsbottom feel any call to write in the name of " Rams-Bottom." 
' Shake-speare " was a good " mask-name," et voild tout. As old 
Thomas Fuller says, the name has a warlike sound," Has ti- 
vibrans;' or " Shake-speare," and as Jonson writes, it is a name 
under which the author 

* Seems to shake a lance 
As brandish 'd in the eyes of ignorance." 



24 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

the actor-manager, who was probably himself 
able to " bumbast out a blank verse," acted as 
" honest broker " for these plays. ^ He received 
them, and put them on the stage if he thought fit 
to do so, and they became, presumably, the 
property of the Company. They became 
*' Shakespeare's " plays, and the authorship, about 
which there was no questioning — for who cared 
a twopenny button-top about the authorship at 
that date ?^ — was, I take it, generally attributed 
to him, though, as a fact, it must have been known 
that, whether he or somebody else were the real 
** Shakespeare," many of these plays were not 
" Shakespearean " at all. But this was a matter 
in which but few people took any interest in those 
days. 

Now, some six-and-twenty years ago Frances E. 
Willard wrote in the Arena Magazine (Boston, 
Mass., 1893) : '' It seems perfectly reasonable to 
me that Lord Bacon and a number of other 
brilliant thinkers of the Elizabethan era, who were 
nobles, and who, owing to the position of the 
stage, would not care to have their names associated 
with the drama, composed or moulded the plays." 
This fairly well expresses my own view, with the 
qualification that I make no assumption whatever 

1 If Jonson in his Poet-Ape Epigram referred to Shakspere, as 
seems to be almost certain, he considered him as, at that time, 
concerned in the " brokage " of other men's writings. See below , 
at p. 27. As to the term " actor-manager," see Note B at p. 45. 

2 " In earlier times, no doubt, people didn't trouble at all 
about the author of a play. It was the play ' presented by the 
Earie of Leicester's servantes,' ' by the children of Pawles,' ' by 
the children of the chapell,' ' by the Lord Admiral's servantes,' 
* by the Lord Chamberleynes' servantes,' or by ' Her Majesties ' 
servantes.' We have much the same thing nowadays, when a 
' producer ' advertises his new pieces as if they were his own 
invention ; and when we have phrases like * the new Gaiety 
piece,' ' the new Kingsway play,' etc." — Mr. Ernest Law in the 
Times Literary Supplement, Dec. 30 1920, 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 25 

with regard to the '* Baconian " hypothesis. 
I would rather say, '' it seems perfectly reasonable 
to me " that some men of high position, and 
especially one great man of transcendant ability, 
wrote dramas under the mask-name of *' Shake- 
speare " — a name which had been already adopted 
by the author of Venus and Adonis — which were 
confided to the actor-manager to be put upon the 
stage. If anybody asks why they should think 
it necessary to conceal their identity, I need do 
no more than advise him to study the social history 
of the Elizabethan age. '* The period of the 
Tudors," writes E. A. Petherick, in his preface to 
Edwin Johnson's Rise of English Culture, " was 
not only a time of severe repression and of harsh 
government, but also a time when free speech was 
impossible. Able men could only dissemble and 
speak in allegory. The plays of Shakespeare and 
of other writers are doubtless a reflection of the 
period ; the names but a disguise — the play- 
writers merely the spokesmen of those who would 
have been sent to the Tower and the Block if they 
had expressed their opinions openly." This 
may be an exaggerated statement, but quite 
apart from any fear of punishment, to write 
dramas for the players was considered altogether 
belov/ the dignity of a noble, or any man of high 
position in the community. However innocent 
might be the work, it brought him into ridicule 
and contempt, and might prove an insuperable 
obstacle to his advancement in the State. Even 
to publish poetry in his own name was unworthy 
of a man of high position.^ In these circumstances 

1 This was so even at a much later time. The learned Selden 
{e.g.) writes, " 'Tis ridiculous for a Lord to print verses ; 'tis well 
enough to make them to please himself, but to make them publick 
is foolish." — Table Talk, under title " Poetry." 



26 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

it was but natural that men in high place, who had 
in mind, it might be, to instruct and improve, as 
well as to entertain, the public, through the medium 
of the drama, should do so under the disguise of a 
pen-name ; and *' Shakespeare," or, as it was so 
often written on title-pages, " Shake-speare," 
formed an excellent pen-name. 

But now the time had come when these 
** Shakespearean " plays — those of them which 
appeared to the editor, or editors, of the Folio to 
be most worthy of publication — were to be 
collected and republished (such as had already 
been published), and with them were to be given 
to the world sixteen dramas which had never seen 
the light in print before, including such master- 
pieces of literature as Twelfth Night, As You Like 
It, A Winter's Tale, Julius Caesar, Macbeth and 
Cymheline. These now, seven years after William 
Shakspere's death, were to be rescued from that 
oblivion to which the actor-author (if, indeed, he 
was the author of them) was, apparently, quite 
content that they should be consigned. 

And now Jonson was to write a poetical panegyric 
which should commend the Folio to the reading 
public, and give it a good send-off. And right 
well he did it, and fully does the world now 
recognise that he did not exaggerate by one jot or 
tittle the eulogy of that " Shakespeare " whose 
writings he held up to the admiration of all readers, 
as such 

" As neither Man, nor Muse, can praise too 
much," 

The plays, I repeat, were the plays of the actor- 
manager ; they were, it would seem, the property 
of his Company ; they were " Shakespeare's " plays, 
and the authorship was, we may suppose, generally 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 27 

ascribed to him, so far as anyone ever concerned 
himself about the authorship. It was, then, for 
Jonson to eulogize '* Shakespeare," and for the 
general public " Shakespeare " would, I imagine, 
be Shakspere of Stratford, the actor-manager.^ 
The true Shakespeare's real name could not be 
revealed, but some ostensible author there must be. 
Why, then, disturb the accepted legend ? So 
Shakespeare would for the general public be the 
** Swan of Avon," as he appears in Jonson's poem. 

But here the indignant critic will doubtless 
interpose. ** What ! Jonson wrote thus, though 
knowing all the facts. Then, according to you, 
Jonson was a liar ! " Whereat we of the 
" heretical " persuasion can afford to smile. For 
we see no reason to suppose that Jonson might not 
have taken the course we attribute to him, and 
considered himself quite justified in so doing. 

Nearly three hundred years sever us from the 
publication of the Folio, and, as I have already 
said, we know that at that date very much less 
strict views were commonly held as to the obliga- 
tions of literary integrity. Literary deceptions — 
" frauds " we might perhaps call them at the 
present day — were constantly perpetrated. Works 
were not infrequently attributed by their authors 
to other writers, who were, in fact, guiltless of any 
responsibility for them. Moreover, nobody at 
that date could foresee that the authorship of the 
Shakespearean plays would be a matter of such 
transcendant importance as it has now become. 
Not having met Jonson in the flesh, and not 
knowing what his views may have been with 
regard to these literary deceptions, or b}^ what 
constraining influences his action may have been 
1 But see Note B at p. 45, 



28 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

governed, but knowing something concerning 
the practice of the times in this connexion, I see 
nothing unreasonable in beheving that he acted 
as I have suggested, and I should no more think 
of calling him '* a liar " on that account than I 
should think of branding Sir Walter Scott with 
that opprobrious epithet because he denied point- 
blank the authorship of the Waverley Novels. 
We know that he considered himself justified in 
so doing, and we doubt not that Jonson also con- 
sidered himself justified in what he did. 

So much, then, for Jonson's famous panegyric, 
which probably did more for the sale of the Folio 
than even his equally famous suggestio falsi (in 
the Preface '' To the Great Variety of Readers "), 
to the eflfect that all the plays therein included 
were now published " perfect of their limbes " 
and '' absolute in their numbers,"^ as the poet 
conceived them. What now of the allusion to 
Shakespeare in his Discoveries ? Here Jonson, 
writing late in life, apparently some time between 
1630 and 1637, records in glowing terms the high 
personal regard in which he held Shakespeare the 
man. '' I loved the man and do honour his 
memory on this side idolatry as much as any." 
But he goes on to say of him that he was such a 
voluble talker that at times it was necessary to 
'* closure " him. He had to be " stopped." Like 
Haterius, who had such a deplorable rapidity of 
utterance, '' sufflaminandus erat,"^ i.e., the brake 
had to be applied. " His wit was in his own 

^ As already mentioned, this is a classical, and quite Jonsonian 
expression. Like certain other expressions in the Epistle Dedi- 
catory, evidential of the Jonsonian authorship, it is taken from 
Pliny ; " liber numeris omnibus absolutus " (Ep. 9, 38), Not 
much like poor Heminge and Condell, I apprehend ! 

2 The word sufflaminare means to check or repress in speaking. 
See Is there a Shakespeare Problem ? p. 387, and the passages 
from Seneca and Menage there cited. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 29 

power, would that the rule of it had been so too,'* 
says Jonson. '* Nevertheless," adds Ben, *' he 
redeemed his vices with his virtues." 

Now, is it credible that Jonson was here speaking 
of the man whom he had so eulogized some ten 
or twelve years before ; the " soul of the age," the 
man whom he believed to have been the author 
of Hamlet y Lear, Othello, Macbeth, and all those 
wondrous plays of which he had spoken with such 
glowing admiration some thirteen years before ? 
If he was speaking of the player only, knowing 
that the author — who was *' not of an age but 
for all time " — was a different person, there is 
nothing extraordinary in this carping, though, as 
we may believe, quite just criticism which has so 
much perturbed and astonished those v/ho assume 
that he is alluding in such shabby and disparaging 
terms to the " sweet Swan of Avon." Or must 
we assume that he was in his dotage when he so 
wrote ?^ 

1 Jonson says, " Many times he fell into those things could not 
escape laughter, as when he said in the person of Caesar, one 
speaking to him, ' Caesar, thou dost me wrong.' He replied, 
' Caesar did never wrong but with just cause,' and such like, 
which were ridiculous." Can this be a reference to Shakespeare 
the dramatist ? " He said in the person of Caesar'^ in answer to 

one speaking to him ! " He said something in persojia Caesar is ! 
Would one so speak of a dramatist with reference to something 
he had written ? Does it not rather indicate something said on 
the stage by an actor, as Pope long ago suggested ? And " he 
fell " into things which excited laughter. Does this suggest that 
Jonson was criticising the considered writing of a dram.atist ? 
Surely it rather suggests the actor. It is true that Jonson, in the 
Induction to his Staple of Nezvs (1625), m.akes " Prologus," say, 
" Cry you mercy, you never did wrong but with just cause," but 
this does not prove that the words were in Shakespeare's play. 
It is more likely that Jonson onlv heard them at the theatre (or 
heard of them as spoken at the theatre), as Gifford thought. Can 
this be Jonson 's deliberate criticism of the immortal bard whom 
he had lauded to the skies in 1623 ? Or is he speaking of the 
actor, and not the author ? (As to Jonson 's quotation, " Caesar 
did never wrong," etc., I would refer the reader to Is there a 
Shakespeare Problem ? p. 390 and following). As to Jonson's 
borrowing from Seneca, see p. 59. 



30 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

But, it will be objected, Jonson speaks of the 
players as saying of Shakespeare that " he never 
blotted out a line," and writes of them as com- 
mending " their friend " by that " wherein he 
most faulted." Jonson, therefore, identifies 
player and poet. And this, no doubt, will be 
conclusive for those who find it impossible to 
believe that Jonson knew all the facts of the case, 
but felt bound in 1630-6, as he had been in 1623, 
not to reveal them to the world. But what of 
the ** unblotted manuscripts ? " Are we really 
to believe that player Shakspere wrote Hamlet 
{e.g.) currente calamo, and '* never blotted out a 
line ? " No more preposterous suggestion was 
ever made, even in Shakespearean controversy. 
No ; if the players really said of Shakespeare that 
he '* never blotted out a line " (or that they had 
** scarse received from him a blot in his papers ") 
and if the statement was true, so far as their 
experience went, it shows that the players had 
received from the author fair copies only, and here 
is a piece of evidence which the sceptics may well 
pray in aid. For if the real " Shakespeare " was 
" a concealed poet " he would, naturally, have 
had fair copies of his dramas made for him, and 
these would have been set before the players. As 
R. L. Stevenson wrote long ago, " We hear of 
Shakespeare and his clean manuscript ; but in 
the face of the evidence of the style itself and of 
the various editions of Hamlet this merely proves 
that Messrs. Heminge and Condell were un- 
acquainted with the common enough phenomenon 
called a fair copy. He who would recast a tragedy 
already given to the world, must frequently and 
earnestly have revised details in the study." {Men 
and Books, p. 149). But let the reader glance at 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 31 

Shakspere's signatures, and ask himself if it is 
possible to conceive that the Shakespearean dramas 
were not only written by the man who so wrote, 
but written without a blot ! No ; if the anti- 
Stratfordian case seems improbable here, surely 
the " orthodox " case is more improbable still, 
so improbable indeed, as to be incredible. And of 
two improbabilities, if such there be, it is wise to 
choose the less/ 

But there are some earlier Jonsonian utterances 
upon which we have not yet touched, but which 
must by no means be left out of the account. In 
1616, the year of player Shakspere's death, Jonson 
published a book of Epigrams. The volume was 
dedicated to William Earl of Pembroke, Lord 
Chamberlain, the elder brother of the '' Incom- 
parable Pair " of the Shakespeare Folio, and 
Jonson writes, '* I here offer to your lordship the 
ripest of my studies, my Epigrams." Now among 
these Epigrams appears one which must have 
been written a good many years earlier, " On 
Poet-Ape," and there can be little doubt that by 
** Poet-Ape " Jonson intended to make reference 
to player Shakspere. This Epigram runs as 
follows : — 

Poor Poet- Ape, that would be thought our chief, 

Whose works are e'en the frippery of wit, 
From brokage is become so bold a thief. 

As we, the robb'd, leave rage, and pity it. 
At first he made low shifts, would pick and glean, 

Buy the reversion of old plays, now grown 
To a little wealth and credit in the scene, 

He takes up all, makes each man's wit his own, 
And told of this, he slights it. Tut, such crimes 

The sluggish, gaping auditor devours ; 
He marks not whose 'twas first, and after times 

May judge it to be his as well as ours. 
Fool ! as if half eyes will not know a fleece 

From locks of wool, or shreds from the whole piece. 
1 See further on Jonson's Discoveries ^ Note C at p. 56. 



32 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

Jonson, then, it seems looked upon Shakspere 
very much as Greene looked upon " the only 
Shakescene," viz., as ** an upstart crow " 
beautified with stolen feathers.^ " Poet-Ape "^ 
is the player-poet, arrayed in garments stolen from 
others, whose works are *' the frippery of wit " 
{i.e.y the cast-off garments of others) ; who lives 
by *' brokage " (was Shakspere then, perchance, 
a broker of plays ?), and '' makes each man's wit 
his own." Here we may compare the Prologue 
to Jonson's Poetaster where the figure of Envy is 
brought on the stage and asks, 

" Are there no players here ? No poet-apes ? " 

and where we read further 

" And apes are apes though clothed in scarlet," 

which reminds us that players belonging to the 
royal household were clothed in scarlet cloth. 

We remark also the words " he takes up all," 
an expression which brings to our mind Pantalabus 
of the Poetaster (Act. iii., sc. i.). This Pantalabus 
was a player and " parcel-poet "^ who had the repu- 
tation of writing " high, lofty, in a new stalking 
strain," and against whom Jonson is bitterly 
sarcastic. His name is, obviously, derived from 
the Greek ndvra Xa[.iPdveiv to *' take all," or 
to " take up all," as '' Poet-Ape " is said to do. 

In this play also (Act I., sc. 1) we find Tiicca^ the 
braggart Captain saying, with reference to the 
players, " They forget they are i' the statute, the 
rascals, they are blazoned there, there they are 

1 cf. Horace Epist., 1, 3, 18. 

" Ne si forte suas repetitum venerit olim 
Grex aviuiTi plumas, moveat cornicula risum 
Furtivis nudata coloribus." 

2 i.e., like a parcel-gilt goblet, a poet on the surface only, but 
inwardly and truly only base metal. Herrick has written twO' 
lines headed " Parcel-gilt Poetry " 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 33 

tricked, they and their pedigrees ; they need no 
other heralds I wiss." The statute is, of course, 
the statute of Elizabeth (see 14 Eliz., c. 5, and 39 
Eliz., c. 4) under which players were classed with 
" Rogues and Vagabonds " unless duly licensed 
to play under the hand and seal of any Baron of 
the Realm or other Personage of greater Degree, 
and one can hardly doubt that the words, ** they 
are blazoned there," etc., are a hit at Shakspere's 
prolonged but ultimately successful efforts to 
obtain a Coat of Arms, to which Jonson makes 
another and still more obvious allusion in Every 
Man out of his Humour. I refer to the conversation 
between Sogliardo, Sir Puntarvolo, and Carlo 
Buffoney the Jester, in Act III., sc. 1. Here we 
find Sogliardo saying, 

" By this parchment, gentlemen, I have been so toiled 
among the harrots [i.e., heralds] yonder you will not believe ; 
they do speak i' the strangest language and give a man the 
hardest terms for his money, that ever you knew." 

" But," asks Carlo Buff one ^ *' ha' you arms ? 
ha' you arms ? " To which Sogliardo replies : 
" F faith I thank God, / ca7i write myself a gentle- 
man now ; here's my patent, it cost me thirty 
pound by this breath." 

Then, after more talk about this newly-granted 
'* coat " and the " crest," during which Puntarvolo 
says (" aside ") *' It is the most vile, foolish, 
absurd, palpable, and ridiculous escutcheon that 
ever these eyes survised," the same character, 
asked by Sogliardo, " How like you 'hem, 
signior ? " replies, " Let the word [i.e., the Motto] 
be, ' Not without mustard,' Your crest is very 
rare, sir." 

Now these words, " not without mustard," are,. 
I think undoubtedly a parody of the Motto 



34 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

assigned to Shakspere, when he and his father, 
after much " toiUng among the harrots," obtained 
from them a grant of arms with the challenging 
Motto *' Non sans Droit.'' This they finally did 
in 1599, though they had previously obtained a 
draft, and a "tricking " {cf. " there they are 
tricked " of the Poetaster) in October, 1596, and 
another later in the same year, neither of which 
drafts, says Sir Sidney Lee, was fully executed/ 
Every Man out of his Humour was produced in 
1599, and it may be noted that Sogliardo, who is 
laughed at as " a boor '* by Sir Puntarvoloy is the 
younger brother of Sordido, a. farmer (Shakspere's 
father was also a farmer amongst other things) and 
is described as *' so enamoured of the name of 
gentleman that he will have it though he buys it." 
The Poetaster was entered on the stationers* 
registers in December, 1601.^ 

Now is it possible to believe that when Jonson 
composed that splendid eulogium of " Shake- 
speare " which was prefixed to the Folio of 1623, 
he was really addressing the man whom he had 
satirized as '' Poet-Ape," and whose proceedings 
in obtaining a coat of arms, in order that he might 
" write himself a gentleman," he had held up to 
public contempt and ridicule ? It appears to me 
impossible so to believe/ 

1 See A Life of Shakespeare (1915), p. 282 seq. 

2 I have dealt with these matters at some length in The Shake- 
speare Problem Restated (1903). See p. 454 et seq. 

^ If he had come to look upon the man whom he had satirized 
under the name of *' Poet-Ape " as having become the " Soul of 
the Age " would he have republished the Epigram among " the 
ripest of his studies " in 1616, and in a volume dedicated to the 
Earl of Pembroke ? And would he have continued the con- 
temptuous passage concerning Shakspere's coat of arms in 
Every Man out of his Humour, when he published that play in 
1601 and again in 1616 ? 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 35 

We, therefore, who find ourselves unable to 
believe that the young man who came from 
Stratford to London in 1587 as " a Stratford 
rustic " (as Messrs. Garnett and Gosse very truly 
describe him in their Illustrated History of English 
Literature, p. 200), composed '' Love's Labour's 
Lost " in, say, 1590, and Venus and Adonis in, say, 
1592; we to whom the arguments against the 
" Stratfordian " authorship appear insuperable ; 
we who are in agreement with Professor Lefranc 
when he writes : *' J'ai la conviction que toute 
personne dont le jugement est reste hbre en ce 
qui concerne le probleme shakespearien, recon- 
naitra que les anciennes positions de la doctrine 
traditionelle ne sauraient etre maintenues "^ ; we 
*' heretics " are convinced that when Ben Jonson 
wrote his panegyric of '' Shakespeare '* as a send- 
off for the Folio, in the publication of which he 
was so closely associated, he was perfectly well 
aware that '' Shakespeare "—speak of him as the 
" Swan of Avon " though he might, and depreciate 
his learning though he might^— was, in truth and in 
fact, but a mask-name for other writers, and more 
particularly for one man of transcendent genius 
who was, indeed, " not of an age but for all time/' 

1 Sous de Masque de " William Shakespeare;' by Abel Lefrane 
Professor au College de France (1919), Preface p. xiii. 

2 " And though thou hadst small Latin and less Greek " wrote 
Jonson. " Here," says the learned Dr. Ingleby, " hadst is the 
subjunctive. The passage may be thus paraphrased : ' Even 
It thou hadst httle scholarship, I would not seek to honour thee 
by callmg thee as others have done, Ovid, Plautus, Terence, etc 
I.e., by the names of the classical poets, but would rather invite 
them to witness how far thou dost outshine them.' Ben does 
not assert that Shakespeare had ' little Latin and less Greek ' as 
several understand him." (Centurie of Pravse, 2nd Edit., p 151) 
This may be correct, but others contend that Ben's words are to 
be taken not in the subjunctive but in the indicative mood. It 
niay be so, since Ben was writing on the hypothesis that the 
player would be generally taken as the poet, and, naturally, had 
to adapt his language to that hypothesis. Either interpretation 
will equally well suit the sceptical case. 



36 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

And here it seems right that I should say a word 
concerning Jonson's ten lines *' To the Reader," 
introducing him to the Droeshout Engraving of 
" Gentle Shakespeare." 

Now as to this famous engraving, I can never 
understand how any unprejudiced person, endowed 
with a sense of humour, can look upon it without 
being tempted to irreverent laughter. Not only 
is it, as many have pointed out, and as is apparent 
even to the untrained eye, altogether out of 
drawing ; not only is the head preternaturally 
large for the body ; not only is it quaintly sug- 
gestive of an unduly deferred razor ; but it looks 
at one with a peculiar expression of sheepish 
oafishness which is irresistibly comic. As George 
Steevens long ago remarked, " Shakespeare^s 
countenance deformed by Droeshout resembles 
the sign of Sir Roger de Coverley when it had 
been changed into a Saracen's head, on which 
occasion the Spectator observes that the features 
of the gentle knight were still apparent through 
the lineaments of the ferocious Mussulman." 
Even Mr. Pollard writes : " If his [Jonson's] lines 
on Droeshout's portrait are compared with their 
subject, we may well be inclined to wonder whether 
he had seen that very doubtful masterpiece at the 
time that he wrote them " — a suggestion which 
certainly does not say much for the value of 
Jonson's testimony. 

And it is of this ridiculous caricature that 
Jonson writes : 

This Figure that thou seest put 
It was for gentle Shakespeare cut 
Wherein the graver had a strife 
With nature to out-doo the Hfe. 

Now Jonson was an enthusiast concerning the 
pictorial art. " Whoever loves not picture," he 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 37 

writes, " is injurious to truth and all the wisdom 
of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the 
n>ost ancient and most akin to Nature."^ How 
then could he have thus written concerning the 
Droeshout signboard ? When one looks at this 
graven image of the FoUo frontispiece, the sugges- 
tion that the Graver had here a strife with nature 
to '' out-doo the Hfe " appears to be so absurd 
that, surely, it can hardly be taken as seriously 
intended. 

And what interpretation are we to put upon the 
following lines ? 

O, could he but have drawn his wit 
As well in brass as he hath hit 
His face, the Print would then surpasse 
All that was ever writ in brasse. 

Sir Sidney Lee's comment is : '' Jonson's 
testimony does no credit to his artistic discern- 
ment." But is it possible to beheve that old Ben 
was not only so lacking in '' artistic discernment " 
but also so deficient in the sense of humour and 
the perception of the grotesque as to write these 
Imes with the Droeshout engraving before him, if, 
mdeed, he wrote them seriously } I think, on 
the contrary, it is reasonable to beheve that Jonson 
was aware when he so wrote that this portentous 
caricature was not, in truth and in fact, a portrait 
of the true Shakespeare ; that the Hnes above 
quoted are capable of a meaning other than that 
which the ordinary reader would put upon 
them ; that, as that *' orthodox " writer, Mr. John 
Corbin, says, Ben does well to advise the reader, 
" if he wants to find the real Shakespeare, to turn 
to the plays " and to look '' not on his picture, but 
his book," which is certainly very excellent advice. 

1 Discoveries CIX. and CX., Poesis et pictura and De Pictura. 



38 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

Here, then, the sceptic can find no strengthening 
of the orthodox tradition concerning the Shake- 
spearean authorship. He rather prays in aid the 
portentous Droeshout portrait, and the Jonsonian 
lines, as lending themselves to a cryptic inter- 
pretation which, as it appears to him, may quite 
reasonably be put upon them, and which is, to 
say the least of it, quite consistent with the 
** heretical " case.^ 

But did those who were intimate with Shakspere 
of Stratford really believe that he was the man whom 
Jonson intended to eulogise as the author of the 
plays of " Shakespeare " ? Did they themselves 
believe that he was, in truth and in fact, the author 
of those plays ? 

Now but twelve years after Jonson's magnificent 
panegyric was published, viz., in 1635, we find 
that the Burbages, to wit, Cuthbert Burbage, and 
Winifred, the widow of Richard Burbage, and 
William his son, presented a petition to the Earl 
of Pembroke and Montgomery, the survivor of 
the " Incomparable Pair " to whom the Folio 
was dedicated in such eulogistic terms, and then 
Lord Chamberlain, praying that their rights and 
interests in the Globe Theatre, which they say 
they built at great expense, and the Blackfriars, 
which was their inheritance from their father — - 
those theatres where *' Shakespeare's " dramas 
were presented — should be recognized and re- 
spected. The petitioners are naturally anxious to 
say all they possibly can for themselves and the 
company of players with whom they were 
associated, and they seek to enforce their claim by 
a reference to the past history of those theatres, 

1 I have dealt with this matter at greater length in Is there a 
Shakespeare Problem ? at p. 395 et seq. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 39 

and those connected with them, both as players and 
profit-sharers. One of those players, one of the 
" partners in the profits of that they call the 
House " (viz., the Globe) was William Shakspere. 

And how do they speak of him ? Surely here 
was a great opportunity to remind the Earl that 
one of their company had been that man of 
transcendent genius, '* Shakespeare," the great 
dramatist, the renowned poet, the " sweet swan 
of Avon," whom no less a man than Ben Jonson 
had eulogised but twelve years before — viz., in 
that great work containing his collected plays 
which was dedicated to the Earl himself and his 
brother — as the " Soul of the age, the applause, 
delight, the wonder of the stage " ; that man whom, 
and w^hose works, the two Earls had '' prosecuted 
with so much favour " during his lifetime ! 
Surely they ought to have done this ! Surely, as 
shrewd men of business, wishing to recommend 
their case to the Lord Chamberlain, they could 
not fail to recite these facts, so much in their 
favour, if facts they were ! Surely they must have 
appealed to Jonson's splendid panegyric of their 
fellow, it they really believed that the Earl believed 
that it was their fellow whom Jonson had in mind 
as the author of the plays and the object of his 
eulogy ! Yet what do they actually say ? '' To 
ourselves we joined those deserving men, Shakespere, 
Heminge, Condall, Phillips, and others, partners 
in the profits, etc.," and, as to the Blackfriars, 
there they say they ' placed men players which 
were Hemings, Condall, Shakspeare, etc." 

Those of the orthodox faith, who refuse to admit 
that there is a Shakespeare Problem at all, of 
course make light of this. They affect to think 
it the most natural thing in the world. Yet, 



40 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

surely, to the impartial man it must seem incredible 
that the Burbages should have thus written about 
Shakspere, calling him just a " man-player," and 
speaking of him in the same terms as of the other 
players, viz., as a " deserving man," and nothing 
more, if indeed both they and the Lord Chamberlain 
knew, and all the world knew, that he was the 
immortal poet who was " not of an age but for all 
time," whose collected works, dedicated to the 
two Earls, to their everlasting honour, had been 
for twelve years before the public, and whose 
poems, dedicated to another great Earl, were 
^* familiar as household words " to every man of 
the time who had the slightest pretension to literary 
taste or knowledge ! The author of Venus and 
Adonis, and Lucrece, of Hamlet, Lear, and Othello, 
of As You Like It, The Merchant, and Twelfth 
Night, and all the other immortal works, but a 
" man-player " and ** a deserving man " ! Is it 
not incredible that he should be so described ? 

But it was as a fellow-player — a " man-player " 
and a " deserving man " — that the Burbages knew 
Shakspere. It was in these capacities that the 
Earl of Pembroke knew him ; and it was in these 
capacities, as I am convinced, that Ben Jonson 
knew him, however much it may have suited his 
purpose and the purpose of those who were 
associated with him in the publication of the Folio, 
that he should *' camouflage " the immortal poet 
under the semblance of the player. 

The truth is, as I cannot doubt, that the Burbages 
were writing as plain men dealing with facts, while 
Jonson's ambiguous poem has to be interpreted 
in an esoteric sense. If then, the real truth were 
known, I have no doubt that the " irrefragable 
rock " would turn out to be but scenic canvas 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 41 

after all. There was " camouflage " even in 
those days, and plenty of it, although the name 
was then unknown/ 

1 Another instance in point is the case of John Manningham, 
barrister of the Middle Temple, a cultured and well-educated 
man, who saw Twelfth Night acted in the Hall of that Inn, and was 
so struck by it that he makes an appreciative note in his diary 
concerning it, under date Feb. 2, 1601, yet had no idea that 
player Shakspere was the author of the play, for on March 13 of 
the same year he makes a note of a scandalous story concerning 
Burbage and Shakspere while acting in Richard III., and instead 
of recording that Shakspere was the author either of that play 
or of the play that pleased them so much on the occasion of their 
Grand Night at the Middle Temple, he appends the laconic 
remark, " Shakespeare's name William ! " How differently did 
he speak of Ben Jonson ! Would he write " Jonson's name 
Benjamin ? " Hardly. He well knew the literary and the 
theatrical world, and he tells us of " Ben Jonson, the poet," 
though *' Shakespeare the poet " was unknown to him ! See 
the Diary under date Feb. l2, 1603. 



NOTE A 
JONSON AND BACON 

Although I have no intention of appearing as an 
advocate of the *' Baconian " hypothesis, it seems 
desirable to say a word here concerning the 
relations between Bacon and Jonson. 

There is, I think, good warrant for saying that 
in some of his dramas Jonson made satirical 
allusions to Bacon, but, however this may be, it is 
certain that in later years the two were on very 
intimate terms, and that Jonson entertained feelings 
of the highest respect and esteem towards '' the 
large-browed Verulam."^ I do not know that 
there is evidence to show just how it was that such 
intimacy commenced, but we learn from his 
conversation with Drummond that when Ben was 
setting forth, in the summer of 1618, on his walk 
to Scotland, Bacon laughingly told him that '' he 
loved not to see Poesy go on other feet than 
poetical Dactylus and Spondaeus." We know, 
too, that Bacon wrote in 1623, the very year of the 
publication of the Shakespeare Folio, '' My labours 
are now most set to have those works which I had 
formerly published. . . . well translated into Latin 
by the help of some good pens that forsake me 
not "^; and that Jonson was one of these " good 
pens " we know, because, in " Remains now set 
forth by him under the title of Baconiana,'' Arch- 
bishop Tenison relates that the Latin translation 
of Bacon's Essays '* was a work performed by 
diverse hands ; by those of Dr. Hackett (late 
Bishop of Lichfield), Mr. Benjamin Johnson (the 
learned and judicious poet), and others whose 

1 It seems somewhat remarkable that Jonson 's feelings con- 
cerning both Bacon and " Shakespeare " appear to have changed 
at just about the same time. 

2 Spedding. Letters and Life, Vol. VIL, p. 428. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 43 

names I once heard from Dr. Rawley, but I cannot 
now recall them." 

But there is evidence that Jonson was working 
for Bacon some years before 1623. We find, for 
example, Thomas Meautys writing to Lord St. 
Alban in 1621-2, " Your books are ready and 
passing well bound up. Mr. Johnson will be 
with your lordship to-morrow."^ But, further, 
we know that on January 22, 1621, Bacon had kept 
his sixtieth birthday at York House, and that 
Jonson had been with him, and had composed his 
well-known Ode in honour of that event. ^ 

We find, then, Jonson a frequent visitor, if not 
also a resident, at York House, on intimate terms 
with Bacon, writing a highly complimentary ode 
to him on his birthday, and translating his works 
into Latin in 1623, the date when the Shakespeare 
Folio first saw the light. 

We find, further, that Jonson is if not actually 
editing that work, at any rate taking great and 
responsible part in its publication. Nor can we 
omit to notice that if Jonson challenges " com- 
parison " of Shakespeare's works with '' all that 
insolent Greece, or haughtie Rome sent forth, or 
since did from their ashes come," he writes of 
Bacon in exactly the same terms, viz. : that he 
has *' performed that in our tongue which may be 
compared or preferred either to insolent Greece 
or haughty Rome " — truly a most extraordinary 
coincidence, however much the " Stratfordians " 
may endeavour to make light of it. 

Now that Bacon, whether or not he wrote any 

1 Ibid., p. 354. 

2 It has been further said that Jonson was for a considerable 
time a resident member of Bacon's household, but I do not know 
whether there is sufficient evidence in support of this statement. 



44 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

of the plays, was concerned in their collection and 
publication in 1623, although he himself was, as 
usual, working *' behind the scenes," appears to 
me eminently probable, and it is, to say the least 
of it, very possible that if we only knew the real 
circumstances in which that precious volume was 
given to the world a flood of light might be thrown 
on the Jonsonian utterances. 

A powerful writer, and highly distinguished 
literary man, thus writes concerning the " Shake- 
speare Problem " ; " I am ' a sort of ' haunted 
by the conviction that the divine William is the 
biggest and most successful fraud ever practised 
on a patient world. The more I turn him round 
and round the more he so affects me. But that 
is all — I am not pretending to treat the question 
or to carry it any further. It bristles with diffi- 
culties and I can only express my general sense 
by saying that I find it almost as impossible to 
conceive that Bacon wrote the plays as to conceive 
that the man from Stratford, as we know the man 
from Stratford, did." So wrote Henry James to 
Miss Violet Hunt in August, 1903. [Letters^ 
Macmillan, 1920, Vol. I., p. 432). Henry James, 
therefore, found it almost impossible to conceive 
that Bacon wrote the plays, but quite impossible 
to conceive that " the man from Stratford " wrote 
them. But this was written nearly twenty years 
ago, and much critical water has flowed beneath 
the Stratford bridge since that date, and it is but 
truth to say that all recent criticism and investi- 
gation have enormously strengthened the '' anti- 
Stratfordian " case. The belief that the plays 
and poems of Shakespeare were written by " the 
man from Stratford " is one of the greatest of the 
many delusions which have afflicted ** a patient 
world." 



NOTE B. (see p. 24.) 

In speaking of William Shakspere as '* actor-manager " 
I have followed the " orthodox " hypothesis, but there 
appears to be very little evidence to show that he really 
occupied that position ; in fact there seems to be no 
little doubt with regard to his position on the stage 
generall}^ In the spring of 1597 he purchased New 
Place at Stratford-on-Avon, and, says Halliwell- 
Phillipps, " there is no doubt that New Place was hence- 
forward to be accepted as his established residence. ^^ Early 
in the following year, on February 4th, 1598, corn being 
then at an unprecedented and almost famine price at 
Stratford-on-Avon, he is returned as the holder of ten 
quarters in the Chapel Street Ward, that in which the 
newly acquired property was situated, and in none of 
the indentures is he described as a Londoner, but always 
as " William Shakespeare of Stratford-on-i\von, in the 
County of Warwick, gentleman." (H.P. Vol. I., p. 122, 
6th Edn.) There is evidence, as Halliwell-Phillipps 
also tells us, that at this time he was taking great interest 
in the maintenance and improvement of his grounds, 
orchards, etc. " Thenceforward his land, property and 
tithes purchases, along with the fact that in 1604 he 
takes legal action to enforce payment of a debt for malt 
which he had been supplying for some months past, 
are circumstances much more suggestive of permanent 
residence in Stratford, with an occasional visit may be 
to London, than of permanent residence in London, 
with occasional trips to Stratford. . . . From the 
time when he was described as William Shakspere of 
Stratford-upon-Avon (1597) there is no proof that he 
was anywhere domiciled in London, whilst the proofs 
of his domiciliation in Stratford from this time forward 
are irrefutable and continuous. Clearly our conceptions 
of his residency in London are in need of complete 
revision."^ 

'* Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke," adds Mr. 
Looney, *' in the Life of Shakspere, published along with 
their edition of his plays, date his retirement to Stratford 

^^^ Shakespeare^^ Identified, by J. Thomas Looney (Cecil 
Palmer, 1920) p. 56. 



46 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

in the year 1604 precisely. After pointing out that in 
1605 he is described as ' William Shakspere, gentleman, 
of Stratford-on-iVvon,' they continued : ' Several things 
conduced to make him resolve upon ceasing to be an 
actor, and 1604 has generally been considered the date 
vi^hen he did so.' Several other writers, less well- 
known, repeat this date ; and works of reference, 
written for the most part some years ago, place his 
retirement in the same year. ' There is no doubt he 
never meant to return to London, except for business 
visits, after 1604 ' {National Encyclopedia)^ {Ibid.y 
p. 424.) 

We are told that Shakspere lodged at one time in 
Bishopgate, and, later on, in Southwark, " because he 
w^as a defaultant taxpayer (for two amounts of 5s. and 
13s. 4d. respectively) for whom the authorities were 
searching in 1598, ignorant of the fact that he had moved, 
some years before, from Bishopsgate to Southwark. 
Evidently, then, he was not at that time living in the 
public eye and mixing freely in dramatic and literary 
circles." {Ibid., p. 58). According to Sir Sidney Lee, 
Shakspere became liable for an aggregate sum of 
£2 13s. 4d. for each of three subsidies, but " the col- 
lectors of taxes in the City of London worked sluggishly. 
For three years they put no pressure on the [alleged] 
dramatist, and Shakespeare left Bishopsgate without 
discharging the debt. Soon afterwards, however, the 
Bishopsgate officials traced him to his new Southwark 
lodging." {Life, 1915, p. 274). But here we are met 
by the assertion of another eminent Shakespearean 
authority, viz. : Professor C. W. Wallace, of the " New 
Shakespeare Discoveries," who tells us " there is ample 
evidence of a negative sort, that Shakespeare never had 
residence in Southwark ! " {Harper's Magazine, 
March, 1910, p. 505). '* Who shall decide when 
doctors disagree ? " This conflict of opinion but 
further illustrates the fact of the mystery which sur- 
rounds the question of Shakspere's residences while in 
London. 

And now we are confronted with the dates of the 
Shakespearean drama. " It was not till the year 1597," 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 47 

says Halliwell-Phillipps, " that Shakespeare's public 
reputation as a dramatist was sufficiently established 
for the booksellers to be anxious to secure the copyright 
of his plays." (Vol. I., p. 134). In 1598 his name 
appears for the first time on the title page of a play, viz. : 
Love's Labour's Lost, where the author's name is given — 
for that one occasion only — as " W. Shakespere," and 
subsequently in the same year, on the title pages of 
Richard II. and Richard III., the author appears as 
*' William Shake-speare." " We are consequently 
faced," writes Mr. J. T. Looney, '* with this peculiar 
situation that w^hat has been regarded as the period of 
his highest fame in London began at the same time as 
his formal retirement to Stratford ; and whilst there is 
undoubted mystery connected with his place or places 
of abode in London, there is none connected with his 
residence in Stratford. A curious fact in this con- 
nection is that the only letter that is known to have been 
addressed to him in the whole course of his life was from 
a native of Stratford addressed to him in London, 
which appears amongst the records of the Stratford 
Corporation, and which ' was no doubt forwarded by 
hand [to Shakspere whilst in London] otherwise the 
locality of residence would have been added * (Halliwell- 
Phillipps). Evidently his fellow townsmen who wished 
to communicate with him in London were unaware of 
his residence there ; and the fact that this letter was 
discovered amongst the archives of the Stratford Cor- 
poration suggests that it had never reached the 
addressee " (p. 59). " In 1597 the pubUcation of the 
plays begins in real earnest. In 1598 they begin to 
appear with * Shakespeare's ' name attached. From 
then till 1604 was the period of full flood of publication 
during William Shakspere's life tim.e : and this great 
period of * Shakespearean ' publication (1597-1604) 
corresponds exactly with William Shakspere's busiest 
period in Stratford. In 1597 he began the business 
connected with the purchase of New Place. Compli- 
cations ensued, and the purchase was not completed 
till 1602. ' In 1598 he procured stone for the repair of 
the house, and before 1602 had planted a fruit orchard.' 



48 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

(S.L.) In 1597 his father and mother * doubtless under 
their son's guidance ' began a law-suit for the recovery 
of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilmcote, which 
' dragged on for some years.' (S.L.) ' Between 1597 
and 1599 (he was) rebuilding the house, stocking the 
barns with grain, and conducting various legal pro- 
ceedings.' (S.L.) In 1601 his father died and he took 
over his father's property. On May 1, 1602, he pur- 
chased 107 acres of arable land. In September, 1602^ 
' one Walter Gatley transferred to the poet a cottage and 
garden which were situated at Chapel Lane opposite 
the lower grounds of New Place.' * As earh' as 1598 
Abraham Sturley had suggested that Shakespeare 
[William Shakspere] should purchase the tithes of 
Stratford.' In 1605 he completed the purchase of * an 
unexpired term of these tithes.' ' In July, 1604, in 
the local court at Stratford he sued Philip Rogers, whom 
he had supplied since the preceding March with malt 
to the value of £1 19s. lOd., and on June 25 lent 2s. in 
cash.' In a personal record from which so much is 
missing we may justly assume that what we know of his 
dealings in Stratford forms only a small part of his 
activities there. Consequently, to the contention that 
this man was the author and directing genius of the 
magnificent stream of dramatic literature which in those 
very years was bursting upon London, the business 
record we have just presented would in alm.ost any 
court in the land be deemed to have proved an alibi. 
The general character of these business transactions, 
even to such touches as lending the trifling sum of 2s. 
to a person to whom he was selling malt, is all suggestive 
of his own continuous day to day contact with the details 
of his Stratford business affairs." So writes Mr. 
Looney, with more to the same effect, and, in connexion 
with his argument, we must remember that a journey 
from London to Stratford and back was a very different 
thing in Shakspere's time than what it is now, and, 
indeed, from what it was some hundred years later than 
Shakspere's time, when roads and means of communi- 
cation had been somewhat improved. 

There is, however, evidence that in the year h 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 49 

Shakspere was lodging with one Montjoy, a ** tire- 
maker " {i.e.^ wig-maker) in ** Muggle Streete " {i.e.^ 
Monkwell Street) near Wood Street, Cheapside, for in 
the case of Bellott v. Montjoy, which was heard in the 
Court of Requests in 1612, there is a deposition signed, 
according to Professor Wallace, who discovered the 
documents at the Record Office, '* Willm Shaks," but 
according to Sir E. Maude Thompson, " Willm Shakp,"^ 
wherein the witness is described as " William Shakes- 
peare," (not of London, be it remarked, but) *' of 
Stratford-upon-Avon in the Countye of Warwicke, 
gentleman " (but not either as actor or dramatist !) 
from which, and other depositions, it appears that 
** Will " was, in fact, lodging at that time with the worthy 
** tire-maker," and lent his good offices to persuade 
Montjoy's apprentice Bellott to soHcit the hand of the 
said Montjoy's daughter Mary in holy matrim.ony ; 
whereupon the enthusiastic Professor Wallace at once 
jumps to the conclusion that " here at the corner of 
Muggell and Silver Streets Shakespeare was living when 
he wrote some of his greatest plays — Henry V., Much 
Ado, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Julius 
Casar, Troilus and Cressida, Macbeth, Measure for 
Measure, Othello'' ! About this he tells us there can 
be no possible doubt whatever ! But as this is the same 
Professor who also informed us that Shakspere *' honors 
his host by raising him in the play [Henry F.] to the 
dignity of a French Herald under his own name of 
Montjoy," in bUssful ignorance of the fact that " Mont- 
joy, King-at-Arms " was the official name of a French 
Herald, who, as Holinshed (whose history the Professor 
had apparently either not read or forgotten) tells us, 
was conspicuous at the time of the battle of Agincourt, 
and as, moreover, there is no evidence whatever for the 
above wild assertion, we may be content to dismiss 
such futilities with a smile, and pass on to more serious 
considerations. ^ 

I will here leave this vexed question of Shakspere's 
residence in London. Much more might be said, but 

1 See my Shakspere's Handzoriting (John Lane, 1920). 
^ See Note at p. 55. 



D 



50 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

I think enough has already been said to give us pause 
when we are asked to accept the statement that at one 
and the same period he was transacting all this business 
at Stratford, and composing all these marvellous plays, 
and performing the duties of *' actor-manager " at a 
London theatre. To us, however, who entertain no 
doubt whatever that player Shakspere of Stratford was 
not the author of the plays and poems of *' Shakespeare," 
there appears to be no impossibility in the hypothesis 
that the player occupied the position of manager of the 
theatre with which he was connected, more especially 
in view of the fact that there is no evidence whatever to 
show that any important roles were at any time assigned 
to him in the Shakespearean, or any other plays. 

'* There was not a single company of actors in 
Shakespeare's time," says Halliwell-Phillipps, " which 
did not make professional visits through nearly all the 
English counties, and in the hope of discovering traces 
of his footsteps during his provincial tours " this writer 
tells us that he has personally examined the records of 
no less than forty-six important towns in all parts of 
the country, '* but in no single instance," says he, " have 
I found in any municipal record a notice of the poet 
himself."^ Later investigations, including the archives 
of some five and twenty additional cities, have proved 
equally fruitless, yet, writes Sir Sidney Lee, indulging 
once more in his favourite adverb, '* Shakespeare may 
be credited with faithfully fulfilling all his professional 
functions, and some of the references to travel in his 
sonnets were doubtless reminiscences of early acting 
tours " ! The records of Edinburgh have been searched 
but again with negative results. There is no evidence 
whatever that Shakspere was ever north of the Tweed. 
With regard to performances in London, the accounts 
of the Treasurer of the Chamber, showing payments 
made for performances of The Burbage Company for 
the years 1597-1616 (except for the year 1602 the record 
of which is missing) have been scrutinized. Flere we 
find mention of Heminge, Burbage, Cowley, Bryan, 
Pope and Augustine Phillipps, but not once does the 

1 Outlines, Second Edition (1882) pp. xiv., xv. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 51 

name of William Shakspere occur in all these accounts. 
As to the Lord Chamberlain's books, which, as Mrs. 
Stopes writes, " supply much information concerning 
plays and players," the documents, as she adds, 
*' unfortunately are missing for the most important years 
of Shakespearean history." *' In the light of all the 
other mysterious silences regarding William Shakspere," 
says Mr. Looney, " and the total disappearance of the 
* Shakespeare ' manuscripts, so carefully guarded during 
the years preceding the publication of the First Folio 
[viz. : the seven years which elapsed between Shak- 
spere's death and that publication], the disappearance 
of the Lord Chamberlain's books, recording the trans- 
actions of his department for the greatest period in its 
history, hardly looks like pure accident." Be this as 
it may, the loss is certainly very remarkable and most 
unfortunate. An entry has, however, been discovered 
in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber to the 
following effect ; — " To William Kempe, William 
Shakespeare, and Richarde Burbage, servaunts to the 
Lord Chamberleyne, upon the Councelles warrant 
dated at Whitehall XV. to Marcij, 1594, for twoeseverall 
comedies or enterludes shewed by them before her 
Majestic in Christmas tyme laste paste, viz. : upon St. 
Stephen's daye and Innocentes daye ... in all 
XX. H." (H.P. Vol. L, p. 109). A fooHsh attempt has 
been made to make " Stratfordian " capital out of this, 
because the entry in question is said to have been pre- 
pared by the Countess of Southampton, to whose son 
*' Shakespeare " had dedicated his two poems. As a 
fact, however, the entry referred to occurs in a roll of 
the Pipe Office " declared accounts," which contains 
the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber from 
September, 1579, to July, 1596. These accounts were 
engrossed year by year by one of the Clerks in the Pipe 
Office, and signed by the Accountant in each year, or 
period of years. Now in 1594 Sir Thomas Heneage 
was Treasurer of the Queen's Chamber, and in May of 
that year he married Mary, widow of Henry Wriothesley, 
Earl of Southampton, but he died in October of the 
following year, and it seems that no ** declared accoimts " 



52 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

had at that date been rendered since September, 1592. 
The Queen, therefore, issued her warrant to the Countess 
as widow and executrix of the late Treasurer, com- 
manding her to render the account, which she duly did 
from September 29th, 1592, to November 30th, 1595. 
The entry in question therefore had no doubt, been 
prepared by one of the clerks in the office of the Trea- 
surer of the Chamber, and was thus sent in to the Pipe 
Office by the Countess, according to the Queen*s 
command. She was thus only formally connected with 
the account, and further than this there appears to have 
been no connexion whatever between her and Shakspere 
of Stratford. In all probabihty she never even saw 
the entr}^ in question.^ All that appears, therefore, from 
this entr}% is that " William Shakespeare," with Kempe 
and Burbage, about March, 1594, received payment of 
jr20 in all for two comedies or interludes '' showed " 
by them " at the preceding Christmas, though what 
these comedies or interludes were, and what part in 
them was assigned to " William Shakespeare " we are 
not informed. He might have acted as prompter or 
stage-manager for all we know. ** And this," writes 
Mr. Looney, " although occurring three years before the 
opening of the period of his [i.e., * Shakespeare's '] 
fame, is the only thing that can be called an official 
record of active participation in the performances of 
the Lord Chamberlain's Company, afterwards called 
the King's Players, and erroneousl}^ spoken of as 
Shakespeare's Company : the company of which he 
is supposed to have been one of the leading lights." 

Jonson inserts the name of Shakespeare in the castes 
of his pla3^s, Every Man in his Humour, and Sejanus, but 
no mention is made of the parts played by him. *' We 
know," sa3^s Mr. Looney, *' neither what parts he played 
nor how he played them ; but the one thing we do know 
is that they had nothing to do with the great ' Shakes- 
peare ' plays. There is not a single record during the 
whole of his life of his ever appearing in a play of 
* Shakespeare's.' . . . It is worth while noticing that 
although Jonson gives a foremost place to the name of 

^ See my Vindicators of Shakespeare, p. 28. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 53 

* Shakespeare ' in these lists [viz. : of his plays above- 
mentioned] when Jonson's ' Every Man out of his 
Humour ' was played by the Lord Chamberlain's 
Company, the whole of the company, with one notable 
exception, had parts assigned to them. That one 
exception was Shakspere, who does not appear at all 
in the cast."^ 

All that Sir Sidney Lee can say, after mentioning a 
number of plays which Shakspere and his colleagues 
are said to have produced before the sovereign in 
Shakspere's life-time, is " It may be presumed that in 
all these dramas some role was allotted to him ! " In 
the list of actors prefixed to the Folio of 1623, in the 
preparation and publication of which Jonson took such 
a large part, the name of ** William Shakespeare " 
stands first, as in the circumstances, we should expect 
that it would. But what parts did he play ? Rowe 
in his ** Life of William Shakspear," published some 
ninety-three years after Shakspere's death, says, "though 
I have inquired I could never meet with any further 
account of him this way [viz. : as an actor] than that 
the top of his Performance was the Ghost in his own 
Hamlet " ! 

All we can say, then, is that Shakspere was one of 
** those deserving men," whom the Burbages, in their 
petition to the Lord Chamberlain, in 1635, say they 
joined to themselves as " partners in the profits " of 
the Globe ; those " men players " whom they placed 
at the Black Friars. (Ante, p. 34.) Whether or not 
he acted as " Manager " of either theatre we really 
do not know. We only know that his name in its 
literary form of " Shakespeare," or *' Shake-Speare " 
was lent or appropriated to cover the authorship of a 
great number of plays which were published under that 
name. It seems not unreasonable to suppose that he 
acted as a " broker of pla3/s " — as I have already sug- 
gested — on behalf of the theatres with which he was 
connected. It is curious that we find him in 1613, 
but three years before his death, after all the great 

^ See Shakespeare Identified, pp. 73-89. The reference is to 
the Folio Edition of Jonson's plays published by him in 1616, 
the year of Shakspere's death. 



54 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespearean works had been written, and when, if 
he were in truth *' the great dramatist " he must have 
been at the zenith of his fame, employed with Dick 
Burbage at Belvoir to work at the Earl of Rutland's 
new^ '* device," or ** impreso," for which each of them 
received the sum of 44s. ! 

Mr. Looney has summarized the results of his exam- 
ination of the middle or London period of William 
Shakspere's career, which, omitting three or four of 
them, are as follows : — 

He w^as purely passive in respect to all the publications 
which took place under his name. 

There is the greatest uncertainty respecting the 
duration of his sojourn in London and the strongest 
probability that he was actually resident at Stratford 
whilst the plays were being published. [For ** pub- 
lished " we might, perhaps, substitute ** performed."] 

Nothing is known of his doings in London, and there 
is much mystery concerning his place of residence there. 

Only after 1598, the date when plays were first 
printed with '* Shakespeare's " name, are there any 
contemporary references to him as a dramatist. 

The public knew " Shakespeare " in print, but knew 
nothing of the personality of William Shakspere. 

He has left no letter or trace of personal intercourse 
w^ith any London contemporary or public man. The 
only letter known to have been sent to him was con- 
cerned solely with the borrowing of money. 

Although the company with which his name is asso- 
ciated toured frequently and widely in the provinces, 
and much has been recorded of their doings, no muni- 
cipal archive, so far as is known, contains a single refer- 
ence to him. 

There is no contemporary record of his ever appearing 
in a " Shakespeare " play. The only plays with which 
as an actor his name was associated during his life-time 
are two of Ben Jonson's plays. 

The accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber show 
only one irregular reference to him, three years before 
the period of his [i.e., of '* Shakespeare's "] greatest 
fame, and none at all during or after that period. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 55 

The Lon Ch:-— -:;:'"^ B:'-l v.-::- ---"i h^ve 

,: ; : : :r;-i during these years, are, liiit tre 5 rake - 
i'ti'": r: cT iscnpts, iriii:'. t 

ni : i r. i r;. e : s xnissins" r r ; ':. : r. e :'...: '•"• : '. '^ r e : : r ': ■. : : 
the Lord Chi':.': ^:'i;: h ::':.: i'-.- :r. ■■■:.::h :::.er 



1, T:-i i:_i: ^-i ':r. t:'h ' Kvez"," hlii. i-i of his 
H mour," in wh::h ah. h.e ::r.er members of the 
C " ' Tiy appear. 

_ _ "^ ^ Tf^nc\-rf\ ' * ^ r ' ' e t : I ^ '-' ^ r e ■■ ' e : : i '_ '■ " :. e n ~ -■ e "c 

;-/::r^:r.:t :: h:::::;^! //;; 

Ar:.:aii^i:: ::. 1 -: ' 4 , ':-:et r::y /: r^f^f i h' "::.':;:: fitre 
Frrjhlem'i p. 4^3." 

1 '6-107.] 

" The Corr'a-; '; r a-: h.ira:::.' in the insta"it::'. 
c: :ht Prince c: V.^^t; 

3 ? rtrences to the k _:. r ^ of the Globe Thei::e 

?_:::.er evennimc-- ar." :raii:::r. aEiirr, hi" :rh; 
ar. :::ai:^r_:h:an: role £: ar. a:::: 






of "h' r:\: ^:r ^ri -ryi tr -: :-:r i .:_-::; livecL — 



NOTE C. (Jonson's Discoveries.) 
(Referred to at p. 31.) 

Ben Jonson's Timber or Discoveries was published 
in 1641, and, therefore, some six years after Jonson's 
death. The work apparently consists of notes written 
from time to time during the later years of his life. 
Into whose hands the manuscript notes fell and who 
edited them, and what became of them, and whether 
we now have them as Jonson wrote them, is, I appre- 
hend, unknown. On the title-page we read, *' Timber 
or Discoveries, Made upon Men and Matter : As They 
have flow'd out of his daily Readings ; or had their 
refluxe to his peculiar Notion of the Times," with the 
date MDCXLi. It seems clear that the notes were written 
during the last years of Jonson's life.^ Sir Israel 
GoUancz, who edited the work, in the Temple Classics 
series (1902), writes, with reference to the note De 
Shakespeare Nostrati (No. LXiv.), " the impression it 
leaves is that it must have preceded that noblest of all 
eulogies on Shakespeare prefixed to the First Folio of 
1623." But this appears to be an erroneous inference. 
Dr. Ingleby gives the limits of date as 1630-37 (Centime 
of Prayse. Second Edition, p. 174). In an early note 
(No. XLV.) Jonson speaks of an event which happened 
in 1630. In note No. lvi. he tells us that his memory 
was good till he was past forty, but had since much 
decayed. If, therefore, we assume, as seems reasonable, 
that he was upwards of fifty when he so wrote, we arrive 
at a date certainly subsequent to 1623. Moreover in 
note No. lxxiii.^ he speaks of " the late Lord Saint 
Alban," so that this note must have been written 
subsequently to Bacon's death in 1626. 

1 Of that opinion also is Professor Felix Schelling. See his 
edition of the work (1892), Introduction, p. xvii. See also the 
edition by Maurice Castelain (Paris, 1906), Introduction, p. xi., 
M. Castelain suggests that the book may have been begun after 
the burning of Jonson's library in 1623. 

' The numbers are conveniently prefixed to the notes by Sir 
I. Gollancz. 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 57 

It appears, therefore, that the note De Shakespeare 
Nostrati must be taken as representing Jonson's opinion 
•of '' the man " Shakspere some seven or more years 
after the pubUcation of " that noblest of all eulogies."^ 
But some four years before the appearance of the Folio 
of 1623, viz. : in January, 1619, Jonson was staying 
with Drummond of Hawthornden, and Drummond 
made notes of his conversation, and, under the title, 
or heading, *' His Acquaintance and Behaviour with 
poets living with him," we have recorded remarks made 
by Ben concerning Daniel, Drayton, Beaumont, Sir 
John Roe, Marston, Markham, Day, Middleton, 
Chapman, Fletcher, and others. What do we find 
concerning Shakspere ? " That Shakspere wanted 
arte. . . . Shakspeer in a play, brought in a number 
of men saying they had suffered shipwrack in Bohemia, 
where there is no sea neer by some 100 miles." Here, 
then, we have Jonson unbosoming himself in private 
conversation with his host and friend, and this, appar- 
ently, is all he has to say about the great bard who, 
only four years afterwards, he was to laud to the skies 
as the " Soul of the age, the applause, delight, the 
wonder of our stage." We would have expected to 
find whole pages of eulogy, in Drummond's notes, of 
the poet who *' was not of an age but for all time," 
instead of which we have only these two carping little 
bits of criticism : " That Shakspeer wanted (i.e.^ 
lacked) arte " — a curious remark to have proceeded 
from the mouth of him who wrote, in the Folio lines, 
that a poet must be " made as well as born " ; that 
Nature must be supplemented by art ; and that in 
Shakespeare's case such art was not lacking, but, on 
the contrary, was conspicuous " in his well-turned 
and true-filed lines." And then that niggling bit of 
criticism concerning the coast of Bohemia in the 
Winter's Tale, taken straight from the learned Greene's 

^ ** In the remarks de Shakespeare Nostrati we have, doubtless, 
Ben's closet-opinion of his friend, opposed as it seems to be to 
that in his address to Britain," prefixed to the Folio of 1623. 
(Ingleby). 



58 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

novel of Dorasius and Fazcnia, which may be compared 
with the depreciatory allusion to Julius Ccesar in the 
Discoveries. x\s Professor Herford remarks, ** It is 
significant that both in the ' Conversations ' and the 
* Discoveries,' where high praise is given to others, 
Jonson only notes in the case of Shakespeare his defi- 
ciency in qualities on which he himself set a very high 
value." (Article on Jonson in Diet : Nat : Biog : ). 

With regard to Jonson's allusion to the play ol Julius 
Ccesar^ some critics have suggested that the lines he 
has cited are merely misquotation. Thus Mr Andrew 
Lang asks, " of whom is Ben writing ? " and answers, 
" of the author of Julius Ccesar, certainly, from which, 
his memory failing, he misquotes a line." {Shakespeare, 
Bacon, and The Great Unknown, p. 257). But if Ben 
here misquotes, owing to failing memory, it follows that 
the w^hole story is a myth. The basis of the story, if 
Jonson is alluding to the play, is that Julius Ccesar 
originally contained the words quoted by him, " Caesar, 
thou dost me wrong," and Cassar's answer as quoted. 
But in the play as we now have it there are no words 
such as " Caesar, thou dost me wrong," uttered by 
Metellus Cimber (Act III., sc. 1., 33), so that, on Mr. 
Lang's hypothesis, Ben not only misquoted two lines, 
but invented the whole story. GifFord, on the other 
hand, says that Jonson must have heard the words he 
has quoted at the theatre. 

Finally, it may be noted that although Jonson, 
writing in the late years of his life, says of Shakespeare 
(or Shakspere) that he " lov^d the man,^^ and honours 
his memory, yet the often-quoted Nicholas Rowe 
(Shakespeare's first biographer — so-called — ) tells us 
that '* he was not very cordial in his friendship," nor 
have we, in fact, any evidence whatever that he and 
William Shakspere of Stratford were close friends. 
Shakspere's friends were men such as his fellov/- 
players, Heminge, Burbage, and Condell, to whom he 
left by his Will 26s. 8d. apiece to buy them rings. 
He makes no mention whatever of Ben Jonson, who, 
(if, indeed, he was really the author of the note de 



JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 59 

Shakespeare Nostrati, in the posthumously pubhshed 
DiscoveriesY would have us beheve that he so *' lov'd 
the man," while as to the tradition chronicled by John 
Ward upwards of fifty years after Shakspere's death 
(he became Vicar of Stratford in 1662) that Shakspere, 
Drayton, and Ben Jonson had ** a merie meeting, 
and it seems drank too hard, for Shakespear died of a 
feavour there contracted," it is so obviously a myth 
that it is unworthy of serious consideration. There 
is no shred of evidence that Shakspere was on intimate 
terms of friendship with either Jonson or Drayton, and 
Ben's remarks both in the *' Discoveries," and in his 
conversation with Drummond, do but strengthen the 
hypothesis that the main object which Ben had in view 
in writing his poetical eulogy of " Shake-speare " 
prefixed to the First Folio, was to provide a good '* send 
oflF," and to give '' bold advertisement," for that volume, 
in the publication of which his services had been enlisted, 
and in which he was so intimately concerned. More- 
over, as already mentioned, he must have written well 
knowing that several of the plays, and large portions of 
plays, therein ascribed to " Shake-speare " w^re not, 
in truth and in fact, by him, that is to say not by the 
true Shake-speare, whoever the true Shake-speare 
may have been. 

It is remarkable that many passages in the Discoveries 
which have all the appearance of being Jonson's original 
observations are, in fact, literal translations from well- 
known Latin writers, such as Quintilian and the two 
Senecas. This is well seen in his remarks De Shake- 
speare Nostrati. *' His wit was in his own power ; 
would the rule of it had been so too ! Many times 
he fell into those .things could not escape laughter. . . . 
But he redeemed his vices with his virtues. There 
was ever more in him to be praised than to be pardoned." 
This is just taken from the elder Seneca's Controversia 
(Bk. iv., Preface), *' In sua potestate habebat ingenium, 
in aliena modum. . . . Saepe incidebat in ea quae 

^ M. Castelain thinks that the Latin marginal titles of the various 
notes were " added by the editor " (p. ix.). 



60 JONSON AND SHAKESPEARE 

derisum elTugere non possent. . . . redimebat 
tamen vitia virtutibus et persaepe plus habebat quod 
laudares quam cui ignosceres." There seems, however, 
nothing to be concluded from this except that Jonson 
thought Seneca's observations applicable to *' Shake- 
speare," and adopted them as his own pro hac vice ; 
just as when he said of Bacon that he had '' performed 
that in our tongue which may be compared or preferred 
either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome " — w^ords 
which he had previously used with reference to 
Shakespeare," in his lines prefixed to the Folio of 
1623 — he was again quoting from Seneca : *' Deinde 
ut possitis aestimare in quantum cotidie ingenia descres- 
cant et nescio qua iniquitate naturae eloquentia se retro 
tulerit : quidquid Romana facundia habet, quod 
insolenti Graeciae aut opponat aut praeferat, circa 
Ciceronem efiioruit," etc. {^Coniroversia, Bk. I, Preface, 
cf. the passage in the Discoveries, Xo. Lxxii., Scriptorum 
Catalogus, which, by the way, makes no mention of 
Shakespeare). 



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